


Don't Let's Start

by aeroport_art



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, BDSM, Bondage, Dark, Denial, Dom/sub, Dubious Consent, M/M, Meta, Smut, Top Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-26
Updated: 2007-08-26
Packaged: 2018-01-01 03:29:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeroport_art/pseuds/aeroport_art
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean refuses to acknowledge his feelings towards his little brother and Sam doesn't know how, but somehow because of it, they're caught up in a web of <i>wrong</i> that he can't seem to untangle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Smutty fic inspired by some meta posted ([here](http://mona1347.livejournal.com/253961.html)) by mona1347 that I found incredibly fascinating. So I wanted to explore Dean's role as a beta dog through AlphaDog!Sam porn. Not that this hasn't been done already-- poisontaster and mona1347 nailed it with their Sex Pollen 'verse, but I wanted to try it out for myself :D Title taken from the They Might Be Giants song. Beta-ed by the lovely fiddleyoumust. Thanks hon!

“ _Dean,_ ” Sam whispers. “I don’t want to do this. Don’t make me do this.”

Dean’s eyes are closed, his lashes in shadow—they flutter involuntarily, braced for a blow. Sam’s gut roils uncomfortably as he leans forward and steadily places his hands on the table, near Dean’s half-eaten plate, and repeats emphatically, “I _won’t_ do it.”

Dean’s eyes open suddenly, the bright irises jolting Sam backwards until he’s fully seated on his booth again, hands back behind the salt pepper and ketchup barrier between them. _Shit_ , Sam thinks. _Shit, it’s over. It’s all over now._

Dean gets up from his seat, knees knocking against his brother’s until he’s standing at full height. He shrugs his jacket on, slaps down one of the many credit cards spilling out of his wallet, and turns to leave. The bells jangle loudly on the front door as Dean pushes outside.

None of the other customers seem to notice as Sam slumps, shoulders rounded and chin buried into his own chest. Conversation and metallic scrapes against ceramic continue to clutter the airspace of the small diner, and the sound of a defeated sigh is easily swallowed up by the casual din.

Sam looks down. In his lap are his hands, and in his hand lies a smooth, thick ring of metal— a cock ring. It’s an unobtrusive thing, really, and Sam idly rolls it between his palms as he thinks, _I should have just let him wear it._

After all, Dean had asked so sweetly, embarrassed and unable to make eye contact as he’d pressed the warm metal down into Sam’s clammy palm. “In the bathroom,” his brother had said throatily. “Before the check gets here.”

Looking outside through greasy glass doors, Sam can see Dean in the seat of the Impala. The engine’s already on, headlights lit despite the brightening morning sky, and his brother’s impatiently fiddling with something on the dashboard.

Sam clenches his fist, the unforgiving metal spreading his knuckles apart.

He should’ve just let Dean wear the damned thing.

\-----

Six months, give or take— the time it takes for Sam to come apart, unraveled and _insane_ with everything he feels so severely.

He thinks back to when it started, back to one hazy day… some unimportant day out of the hundreds that the Winchesters speed through, like so much road and mileage. He’d been itchy and hot, blistering in his own body as the cheap vinyl upholstery threatened to meld with his skin.

To top it off, the air conditioning had been on the fritz since the last exorcism. With the windows rolled down, Sam’s forearm hung outside, though he was careful not to rest it against the scalding metal of the door. Dry, roasted air blustered in and out of the cabin, and Sam watched his skin bake in the sun.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he swore, feeling warm sweat running down his back and soaking his thin undershirt through. It was uncomfortable and gross, and it felt like a rash starting between his shoulder blades.

Dean was zoned out, eyes hidden behind sunglasses that kept slipping down the bridge of his nose. But when Sam crossly yanked his undershirt off, ripping seams in the process, Dean’s head turned.

Sam tossed the drenched fabric into the backseat and squarely met his brother’s stare. “What?”

Dean faced front. “Nothin’, man.”

But for the rest of the car ride, Dean’s gaze inexorably slid over to Sam, chin tipping down ever-so-slightly as he took in the sight of gleaming sweat against his brother’s smooth, browned skin.

Times like this, when Dean was too exhausted or inebriated to carefully fold his… _problem_ into himself, he wandered into dangerous waters. And unfortunately, Dean had been too exhausted or too inebriated around Sam more often than he could count. Too often to keep anything hidden from his little brother, really.

Sam knew.

Sam knew already, and even if he didn’t, the blatant way Dean feasted on Sam’s naked torso was enough to give up the game. And you know, Sam had had it. He’d _had it_. It was a thousand fucking degrees in this metal junk bucket, too thick with heat even without the sexual tension suffocating him, and Dean just wouldn’t. Stop. Checking him out.

With Dean’s eyes halfway from the road to Sam’s swallowing throat, Sam choked out, “ _Stop it_.” 

Dean snapped to attention, their gazes locked and tense. “Stop what?” he dared.

Everything the brothers had carefully bottled up all these years threatened to break loose, to crash down around their ears, and it would be so easy to do it; so _easy_ to just say the word and let them fall. (Later on Sam would say that the heat urged him, the dizziness _compelled_ him). He said, “Stop the car, Dean,” and they both knew exactly what that meant. This was the farthest they’d ever gotten.

Still, in Sam’s wording lurked an implicit chance to back out— if their intents were unspoken, if they never said it, _it didn’t exist_. Just Sam and Dean, and the way they looked at each other. In Sam’s wording (“ _Stop the car, Dean_ ”) was the chance that Dean could hold himself back just one more time. Because Sam, with his brother’s eyes on him like physical heat, couldn’t be trusted to stay on this side of propriety. It was up to Dean to decide.

Dean stopped the car.

Only, when they were parked on the side of the desolate road with Sam leaning in, eyes fixed on Dean’s mouth, Dean shoved him away.

After a confused pause, Sam said, “What the fuck?” 

Dean wouldn’t look him in the eye. He tried to play it off, asking “What do you mean?” 

“I mean, what the—“ Sam started, but then he saw it. Peered closer, and _saw_ it in Dean’s eyes, Dean’s body language, and he thought of Dean, and it made sense.

It made sense that it would start like this, Dean wanting but unwilling to voice it. Sam got that. He got Dean, so he crushed forward and crowded his brother against the side of the car, satisfaction in his brother’s surprised hiss, and forced his mouth on Dean’s teeth. 

“Sam—“ Dean protested against mashed lips, and Sam read this as “more”. Dean’s knee in his gut felt like “closer” and the frantic shoves at his shoulders screamed “yes.” _Yes_.

It wasn’t until he was sucking the sweat off his brother’s stomach that he paused, unsure. Dean’s hands were pushing at his head, trying to pry him off, and Dean’s soft breaths sounded suspiciously like “no.” Sam backed up enough to see finger-shaped bruises on Dean’s hips, crescents from where his blunt nails had stubbornly dug into his older brother’s skin.

Dean bucked up and threw Sam off, who frowned and settled back at a respectable distance. Sam asked, “Do you want this or not?”

“No,” Dean said, eyes lowered and inscrutable.

Which would’ve been the end of that had Dean not been hard, the bulge in the inseam of his pant leg giving him away. Sam narrowed his eyes as Dean tried to subtly adjust himself, hips rising off his seat as he tugged at his sweat-damp jeans with difficulty.

 _Oh, so we’re playing like that_ , Sam growled inwardly. Fuck, he should’ve known that Dean would never let himself go, would never just let himself _feel_. These weak and easily overcome protests were the closest Sam would ever get to a simple “yes” from his brother, so he was damned well going to take what he could. Demand it, even.

He surged forward, once again shoving Dean up against the door of the cramped cabin, and oh, he demanded— demanded with his tongue on Dean’s mouth, sunburned ear, neck; he claimed Dean’s collarbone and his dark, oval nipples with roving teeth, stopping only to relish his brother’s bitten-off moans and choked sobs.

The whole time, Dean chanted, “No, god—so fucked up— _Stop_ , Sammy.” Over and over again. But Sam knew, Dean wanted it. 

You could blame a thousand things on Sam Winchester, but you could never accuse him of not knowing what made his brother Dean tick. And this, everything they started, _Dean had wanted it._

This is what Sam’s told himself for the past six months.


	2. Chapter 2

The thing is, it hadn’t started off that badly. A forced kiss here, a rough handjob there— nothing that could actually be called, well. There were a lot of nasty things the brothers’ relationship could be called, but mind you, none of them were right. This was _love_.

Dean’s eyes watered as Sam viciously twisted his fingers and stabbed them into his older brother’s clenching ring, up past the second knuckles, with naught but long-dried saliva for lube.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Sam breathed. The sight of Dean’s hole swallowing him up would never cease to fascinate. “You love it, you love it when it hurts, don’t you?”

Dean whimpered and jumped away, trying to escape the painfully dry digits that Sam insisted on working into him, two at a time. Never enough lube, never enough—

“Nuh-uh, don’t even try,” Sam whispered hotly into Dean’s ear as he wrapped a hand around goose-pimpled waist and wrenched Dean’s ass back onto Sam’s fingers, deeper than before. He muffled Dean’s high-pitched keen with a hard kiss, Dean’s neck uncomfortably twisted, gasping for air when Sam finally pulled off.

“C’mon, Dean—“ _shove_ “I’m just giving you—” _pull_ “—what you want.” Sam pushed a third finger alongside the two and lapped at the seam where fingers met ass, and Dean burned from the wet intrusion.

Dean bowed his head and dropped it into crossed arms, ass high in the air, shaking and trembling. He cried out, the noise something between a gasp and a distressed moan, and the push-pull rhythm of Sam’s fingers faltered. _Shit_ , Sam thought, worrying that this was too much, that he was being too rough...

\-----

 

Little did he know, things would only get worse in time. 

Hell, these vague misgivings were nothing compared to the appalled wonder that would eventually fill Sam as he would later wrack his brain as to how the _hell_ they’d ever gotten so fucked up. Sam will ask himself, _how did I let it get this far?_

Then again, if you stop to think about it, nothing terrible in this world ever started off that way. These things were cultured; required baby steps. Even the most atrocious of crimes began simply with a slight deviation, or one newly imposed rule. After all, the Jews didn’t just happily hop into gas chambers; it’d started with paper stars, hadn’t it?

This was Dean’s paper star— finger-fucked dry by his baby brother as lewd words dribbled into his ears and filled his cock with blood.

Jesus, Sam knew Dean wanted it. Though Dean would deny left and right, swear up and down that he didn’t, that they _weren’t—_

“ _Fucking gorgeous like this, Dean,_ ” Sam whispered reverently as he ( _god_ ) cupped Dean’s low-hanging balls, easily cradling them in his wide palm as Dean buried his face in his arms and sobbed.

Oh, fuck it. Sam would never figure out how they got from _close brothers_ to _fucked up lovers_ ; he only knew that there’d been something to bridge the gap. Something that didn’t seem so wrong at the time.

“ _Dean_ ,” Sam gasped, watching his brother spasm around his fingers. “You gonna— _god_ — you gonna come?”

Taking Dean’s frantic, desperate moan as a yes, Sam quickly ducked his head down and tongued his brother’s nuts into his mouth. He felt Dean’s ass twitch against his cheeks as Dean spurted a load onto rumpled bedcovers and he thought, watching Dean slump forward into his own mess, _this isn’t so wrong._

Making Dean moan like that, making him _feel_ like that— there wasn’t anything wrong with fulfilling Dean’s unspoken, furtive desires. A wave of tenderness unexpectedly ebbed forth, and Sam bent forward and pressed his lips against his brother’s damp shoulder.

“Don’t kiss me,” Dean mumbled against blankets, already halfway into blissful unconsciousness. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Sam smiled, lips dragging over Dean’s quickly cooling skin. He watched his brother for a bit longer, then slipped behind his brother’s curled up body like a blanket, liberally draped over Dean’s skin, arm tucked in underneath the soft space of Dean’s side. Grinning wickedly, he thought of Dean waking up in his own dried come and how grossed out and embarrassed he’d be. _Probably blame it on me somehow,_ Sam thought, hiding a snort between Dean’s shoulder blades. 

He mulled over that thought awhile longer but feeling tired, Sam wriggled a nest out of tangled sheets and drifted into slumber, burying his face between Dean’s neck and shoulder.

Dean sighed in his sleep.

\-----

 

And so, for awhile, they were good. More than good; Sam would sometimes think, _this is **great**_. He’d grown up with a desire, a wholly inappropriate _want_ of his older brother, and he’d grown up thinking nothing would come of it. But something… something ( _gloriously_ ) had.

For a few months there, Sam and Dean fell into a sort of routine. Furtive glances, charged with meaning, would lead behind rest stops to Dean’s scraped up knees as Sam fucked his mouth. Or sometimes on the road, Sam’s hand would snake down Dean’s fly and dare the older man to drive in a straight line, dare him to not total the car as he unwillingly orgasmed into Sam’s cupped hands, filling them with come; come that would be slowly and tantalizingly licked up between fingers as Dean tried not to watch, his ears burning.

For awhile they were good— as good as two brothers in love and in denial could be. But things change. Whether sharp and abruptly, or slow as molasses, things always change.

For Sam, it was gradual, like the growing of bones. Unnoticeable but for the day you stop, measure, and realize: you’re _different_ now.

He’d like to say he noticed the difference as Dean became increasingly stubborn, and not because his feelings were being increasingly hurt. Either way, the more Sam wanted Dean, wanted his _brother_ and not some second-rate substitute in the form of submission, the more he’d get pushed away. 

What began as a game of cat-and-mouse slowly began to feel wrong, just _wrong_ to the bone. Even if Dean craved it, _needed_ it to justify their relationship, Sam was sick of fighting for every kiss or touch, every shove into his brother’s averse body.

“ _Dean_ ,” he’d said the other night, soft syllables on his tongue as his dick softened and slipped out of Dean’s dripping ass. “God, you’re so…”

Dean’s eyes shot open in panic and he messily fumbled out from beneath Sam. “Not this shit again, Sammy.”

Sam swallowed the words in his throat and let them suffocate, reluctant as they were to remain unheard. _Jesus._ He ran a hand through his damp hair. “Then when, Dean?”

“Fuck you,” Dean bit back, his expression caged and dangerous.

At being rebuffed (once _again_ ), a sickening fury grew inside of Sam until it launched into full-fledged rage and frustration. Sam threw Dean back onto the bed and pushed his wrists down so hard he felt the bones tighten between his fingers. He felt something inexplicable, something a little like _triumph_ sing through him at his brother’s outward alarm, those fuckable lips open in surprise. 

That mouth was _his_ , and Sam took those cocksucking lips with his own and in the harsh press of mouths, in the invisible space there, Sam pleaded for everything that _he_ craved, that _he_ needed like some fairytale wish, as if simple yearning would land him an admission of love. 

Dean struggled to weasel out from underneath but he only succeeded in rubbing himself against Sam’s unyielding body. The blatant fight in Dean’s eyes, his desperation in getting away only infuriated Sam more. And so, he kept taking— kept taking until Dean cried with inexplicable shudders, until they were both too tired and fucked out to care anymore.

Sam scared himself, sometimes.

\-----

 

Sam would do little things to justify himself. Once, he kissed Dean on the mouth, tenderly and quietly in the dead of the night with as much love as he could muster, but Dean had been awake (how could Sam have been so _stupid?_ ). 

“What the fuck are you doing?” Dean mumbled, voice so heavy with sleep that Sam could barely understand him.

“What?” Sam whispered, daring not to move despite the loudly throbbing heart on his sleeve.

Dean said nothing, only exhaled into Sam’s mouth. Sam fought down the quickly escalating elation and held himself still, before gently pressing in and kissing his brother again. _Careful, slow,_ Sam coached himself. _Don’t scare him._

Nonetheless, Dean groaned and grudgingly sat up, disentangling himself from his brother’s limbs. “Sam, we’re not. I mean, you can’t…” he struggled.

Sam growled, his impatience worn thin and raggedy through. He whispered hotly, “Why can’t you just get over the fact that you’ve been fucking your brother for the past four months, and _move on?_ ”

Dean sat up straighter and looked at him, his eyes impassive and cold.

 _…Shit, so not the right thing to say_. An angry Dean Sam could deal with, but this, when his brother blockaded himself into a corner? There were some things a person never learned to deal with, and Dean’s stubborn emotional barrier was not something to underestimate.

“Forget you ever said that, Sam,” Dean said, almost casually.

Sam swallowed hard, though the lump there threatened to choke him. “ _No_ ,” he said hoarsely.

After a moment’s pause, Dean replied, “Fine.” 

_Fine?_

And as if to prove the point, the day passed uneventfully— research and a long, unfruitful excavation broken up only by quick meals— however, Sam knew he wouldn’t get off so easy. You don’t shove a man’s fear in his face and expect him not to bite back in defense.

Naturally, Dean held up his end of the bargain.

\-----

Sam dreamed:

_Swimming in the ocean, stroke after stroke and lulled out to sea with only lapping water at his ears and the taste of salt on his tongue. It was dark blue out, endlessly navy hues and Sam was alone. He swam out until satisfied with his distance from the earthly shore of dirt and debris, away from the shit that tracked on his feet, all over his skin._

_He swam out into the ocean and flopped onto his back to float, buoyantly and remarkably free from control and responsibility, just along for the ride. The cold water trickled into his ears and it tickled, uncomfortably wet, and the sounds of slapping waves grew louder and louder, until it was all he could hear, all he_ knew—

Sam woke.

In the next bed over, two bodies: a girl on all fours and Dean at the helm, his hands clutching ten bruises into her softly-shaped hips as he rocked back and forth, wet collisions and slick departures so obscene, Sam cringed.

He didn’t need to know the exact noise, the precise _cadence_ of a girl’s churned juices sliding along the length of his brother’s dick. He really didn’t need to know.

 _Jesus,_ Sam seethed as he listened, the seconds teased into minutes, into _louder and sloppier_ until Sam rolled onto his side and watched the dark silhouette of a six-legged beast arching in orgasm.

Another sound he could live without: the sound of Dean extricating himself out of a sopping pussy; a little bit suctioned so as to hear the precise moment of two bodies detaching—

Sounds Sam needed to not _ever_ hear again. He felt something inside him crumble as he decided, _Okay Dean, fine._ Sam bit down hard onto his knuckles, needing the flush of pain to spur him forwards. _If this is the only way I can have you, fine._

He flattened his mouth in thinly pieced determination and rolled back to face the wall.

He’d have his brother back. Even if it robbed Sam of his own humanity, Dean would be _his._

\-----

 

The first thing Dean thought as he woke was, _Oh, I hope she’s gone. Hate it when they hang around._ He let that thought settle for a moment, then turned over and threw an arm out, which landed with a mattress-y thump. He nodded in satisfaction. 

It was uncomfortably warm out… the kind of warmth that came with sleeping in too long and too late. What time was it, anyway? Dean unfurled into consciousness with sleepy sighs and cat-like stretches before looking over to Sam’s side of the room.

“Morning, sunshine,” Sam said dryly from the other bed, chin on a fist and leaning forwards.

“Dude, how long you been starin’ at me? Freaking me out, man,” Dean complained with a raspy throat as he pulled his sheets up self-consciously.

Sam ignored his question, only smiling darkly and stating, “Last night, Dean.”

Dean swallowed nervously. “What about it?”

“Oh, you know,” Sam said as he slid off the bed and landed on his knees. “You know what you did.”

Yeah, Dean knew. Hell, he could still smell her sweat and sex on his sheets. 

Sam made his way across the gap, reaching Dean and promptly grabbing a fistful of blankets before jerking them halfway off the bed.

“Hey!” Dean cried out in alarm, trying to stuff down the _yes, **finally**_ that surged through him like electricity. 

Some time ago, Sam had stopped touching him. Dean had obsessively combed through his memory for what he’d done to cause the sudden distance, but all it came down to was that one night Sam was kissing him, and the next, he wasn’t. By the time the second week of Sam’s nonchalance rolled around, Dean had given up on ever seeing lust darken Sam’s gaze again, or on feeling the tight pressure of Sam’s hand against the back of his neck. 

But hey, this was a good thing, right? Right. After all, their recent indiscretions had handed Dean equal parts grief alongside the ecstasy and really, who needed all that excitement? He could make do with being fine; even just being _alive_ was good enough.

Sam cocked his head to the side, glowering in impatience as his brother’s mind wandered. He tightened his hold on Dean’s blankets and pulled them all the way off, relishing the view as Dean went tense and actively fought against the instinct to cover himself up— _Hell, I ain’t got anything to hide._ Still.

“Gimme my blankets back,” Dean grumped. He sat up and swiped for the sheets but Sam threw them across the floor and grabbed Dean ‘round the wrist. “Dude, quit it,” Dean said, trying to twist his arm back, but Sam just gripped harder and pulled in until Dean was half-spilling off the bed.

“Don’t be obtuse, Dean,” Sam said as he wrestled his older brother’s legs until they swung over the edge of the mattress, pushing Dean’s knees apart and primly seating himself between them. “You know what’s coming, and you know you deserve it.”

Dean swallowed convulsively as he watched Sam scrabble for the nightstand drawer with one hand, the other one painfully squeezing all the blood pressure out of Dean upper thigh.

Dean knew he should put a stop to this. On the other hand, this was Sam taking from him— _taking_ what he wanted from Dean, using him for his own needs, and it felt like the best goddamned feeling in the world. Hell, Sam had been taking from Dean since the day he blinked up at him from his baby crib… whether eating the last of the cereal or demanding Dean’s wracked energy as he was forced to play peacemaker between cataclysmic father-son standoffs, Dean had long since defined himself this way: mother, father, nurturer, _brother_. He recognized himself in taking care of Sammy, in needing to be needed, taken, and _used_ to be worth something. Dean just wasn’t the type of guy to be lavished and willingly given love to, no— as Sam had once proven, the moment he stopped being a necessity Dean would be alone again

 _Mother, father, nurturer, **brother**_ — anything else and Sam would tire of him, regardless what pleading eyes and sappy overtures promised.

Dean flinched as he suddenly noticed Sam’s fist inches from his face, but his hand was just hovering there, closed around whatever it was he’d fished from the night stand. _Condom, lube?_ He held his breath as Sam slowly, tantalizingly opened his palm.

_Oh, shit._

Sam brought the small, metal vibrator he pinched between forefinger and thumb up to his face and licked the tip of it, relishing the apprehension in his brother’s gaze. He shouldered Dean’s legs apart and reached down, waiting for it…

“What the fuck Sam, stop it,” Dean cut in and Sam shut his eyes, steeled himself.

“Shut up, or it’s going in dry,” Sam growled before lifting his brother’s heavy ball sac with one hand and placing the vibrator against his entrance. The metal was cold and Dean jerked backwards but Sam held him in place, tweaked his balls painfully to make his point.

“Jesus, alright.” He scooted in again and Sam let go, placing his palm instead on the inside of Dean’s thigh and spread him wider, harder, until Dean thought he was going to pull a muscle.

All grumbling thoughts vanished as cool, spit-slicked metal carefully nudged up against his hole. Dean held himself very still as the vibrator slid in, millimeter by millimeter, until all Dean could feel was the warmth of Sam’s finger against his puckered entrance and a vague feeling of coldness inside.

Sam poured into Dean’s personal space, forehead lightly butting against Dean’s chin as he bit into his brother’s throat, sucked a tight, vicious little hickey that pinched like a mother fucker.

“Sa- Sammy…” Dean bit his lip. “Look, I won’t bring ‘em around anymore. Just quit it already—“

“No,” Sam said against the underside of Dean’s jaw, his breath traveling up over the ridge as he traced a ghostly trail of lips to Dean’s ear. “ _No_ ,” he repeated there. Then he bit down hard on Dean’s earlobe.

Dean yelped and pulled back but Sam followed in like an avalanche of ruthless scrapes of teeth and swaths of warm tongue, raspy scratches of stubble. Dean struggled against the enormous weight but Sam only bore down, the material of his jeans painfully rough against Dean’s interested dick.

Then without warning, amidst the flurry of skin and fabric and bruises, Sam switched the vibrator on. Dean thrust up into an impossible arch, his mind blank from everything but _Holy SHIT,_ as he choked back a sob. Sam only turned the vibrator up another spine-rattling notch and leaned forward, his breath heavy and damp against Dean’s ear. He whispered, “ _Now you know who you belong to_.”

As if there’d ever been a doubt.

\-----

 

Back at the diner Sam’s sitting alone, cock ring in his pocket like a hot iron brand that’s burning his thigh as Dean waits outside in the car.

“There ya go,” the waitress says with a strawberry pink smile and Sam barely looks up as he pockets the credit card, scrawling a fake signature and large tip on the receipt.

“Thanks,” he says, handing her the bill. She looks at Sam curiously as he hesitates, torn between joining his brother like a normal human being or hiding out at the diner until some cosmic intervention would abdicate him from all responsibilities, all duties he knew he had to perform; all of them waiting for him in the Impala just a few meters away.

No earthquake or meteorite comes. Sam sighs heavily and gets up, smiles politely as the waitress wishes him a good day, and pushes outside.

The rising sunlight’s irritating in his eyes; his hair fringe does nothing to block the blinding rays from his pupils. He squints, grimaces, then walks over to the Impala with gravel crunching underfoot. Inside the car, Dean’s staring straight ahead, sunglasses keeping his face stubbornly impassive.

“Hey,” Sam says. This isn’t going to be easy, and he knows it. Dean knows it too.

“We’re meeting the Graham’s at 9:30, you think we should take the—“

“Dean.”

Dean ducks his head down, exasperated as if they’d been arguing for hours already. Maybe they have, maybe the past six months have just been one long, drawn out dispute, and if that’s the case, _Better to do this now, pull the plug, cut my losses, or something,_ Sam thinks.

Still, a little flicker of stubborn hope refuses to go out so Sam thinks, _One more try_. Just one more, and then he’ll do it.

“ _Dean,_ ” he repeats, leaning in and gently placing his hand on his brother’s shaking leg. Encouraged by Dean’s silence (and steadfastly ignoring the tightening of Dean’s hands on the wheel, knuckles ivory white), Sam touches his lips to the side of Dean’s mouth.

 _Let me in, shhh, open for me._ Sam sinks in closer, tenderly applying more pressure until it’s a kiss, you could call it a _kiss_ at the corner of Dean’s mouth and Dean’s _letting him—_

“Sam.”

—and, of course. The proverbial flame of hope is snuffed clean like wet fingers on a wick, and Sam can smell the smoke in his nostrils. This will be the last so he makes it a good one; cups his brother’s chin in his hand and turns his face until he can get at Dean, get at that excruciatingly beautiful, expressive mouth that’s been torturing him for _years_ , and Sam kisses him. He kisses his older brother hard and desperately, cutting his lips on Dean’s teeth because this is all he’ll get— all he’d ever gotten, really— and their last kiss should be no different.

When the heat of Dean’s tongue is heavy against his and Sam’s quietly mourning in the back of his throat, Dean shoves him off and extricates himself from his brother’s wandering hands just as outside, a family of four leaves the diner and walk past Sam’s window. The brothers watch the dust settle in their wake and when it’s calm again, Dean says, “The Graham’s, we’re gonna be late.” Oh, it’s a concession for him, yeah. No rebuff, no anger at his presumptuous little brother but god damn it, Dean _knew_ , he _must_ have known in the finality of Sam’s searching mouth, the low grief in his moan—

Sam swallows down the lump in his throat and says, “Yeah. We might not make it.”

On the road, if Dean’s pushing the Impala a little too fast for comfort, if Sam’s face is turned unnaturally far to the side and his coughs sound a little too wet, nobody’s mentioning it. Neither of them will mention any of this.


	3. Chapter 3

Of course, just because neither Sam nor Dean will ever bring up their affair again, doesn’t mean that things don’t change.

Dean holds his brother in his arms and feels the life go out of Sam; feels his brother (lover, everything, the _only_ thing) slump against him like a limp, heavy mannequin and there’s nothing to be said about that. There’s absolutely nothing Dean can say to even begin to encompass how Sam’s death feels to him, so there is only this:

Hours later, Sam is alive again; confused and smelling of blood but beautiful, and _breathing_. And Dean tells his reservations to _fuck off_ because there’s more to it than that, and he holds Sam tight, doesn’t let go.

He won’t let go of Sam throughout the night. When Sam cautiously tucks Dean’s head under his chin, Dean burrows in. Sam nervously kisses his brother on the forehead and there is no resistance. So he kisses Dean’s damp eyes, ventures for Dean’s trembling mouth and wonders if he’s dead or dreaming or caught in a spell because this is _Dean_ , this is his neurotically paranoid scared ( _No Sam, stop it, we’re not let’s don’t_ ) older brother Dean who’s _kissing him back._

Later, when Sam’s thrusting inside of Dean and staring in fascination at his brother’s open face, Dean runs his palm over Sam’s cheek and gasps, _God, **Sam.** _

Sam comes inside his brother, their hips bucking together as if Dean’s trying to siphon it deeper within him. If the old myths are to be believed, Sam’s _inside_ of Dean now, their spirits irrevocably entwined and lending each other all things above and beyond the flesh. When Dean opens his bright eyes and looks up at Sam awestruck, like it’s the first time he’s ever seen in color, it’s not so hard to believe.

 

_End._


End file.
